Owner Says India Not Ready For Electric Cars: Says Even Pre-Planning Doesn’t Work

In the last 5 years, we have seen a rise in the number of EVs in the Indian market. Not only are brands making EVs, the sales numbers are going up too. The government is also promoting EVs as part of green initiatives, and many states are even offering incentives to customers. While we have seen many videos of people saying positive things about EVs, we also come across a few instances where EV owners come out and reveal the flaws in the existing system. Here, we have one such video where an EV owner talks about the challenges and how he feels Indian infrastructure is not ready for EVs.

The video has been shared by Asif Belim on his Instagram page. In the video, the owner talks about the challenges he faced as an EV owner after buying an electric car. It looks like he is driving a Mahindra BE6 while recording the video.

In the video, he talks about how Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and other authorities and brands are promoting EVs and how the general public is falling for it. He says that after buying an EV, the real challenge starts.

He says that when he takes his EV on a road trip, he faces issues in finding a charging station. He says that even pre-planning a trip with proper stops doesn’t help at times. There have been times when he marked a charging station during his trip, and when he reaches the point, he realises that the charger isn’t operational.

This has been a common complaint that we have been hearing from many EV owners lately. The owner or driver is then forced to push the car to the next charging station. Even then, there is no guarantee that he will find an operational or a vacant one.

Even upon finding a charger, the owner faced problems with power supply. He says that the charger claims to be a fast charger but often delivers less power. This means the driver will have to wait longer to get his car charged before resuming the journey.

He also talks about another challenge that he has been facing. He says that there are several firms offering charging stations on highways. Almost every operator has a dedicated application and their own set of rules to use the charger.

The customer is often forced to install multiple applications just to recharge the wallet and charge the vehicle. Instead of using multiple apps, he wants a unified application or an RFID card-based system that would help them charge their vehicles without issues.

This is an issue that most brands launching EVs now are working on. Almost all EVs are now being offered with an app from the brand that shows all the chargers and can also handle the recharges without any hassle.

The reason why the owner pointed this out is because he says not everyone is tech-savvy and might not understand the mobile application. This unified payment method or charging application will help in reducing the confusion among customers. The owner talks about the issues that he, as a customer, has faced and mentions that the EV infrastructure in India is not ready yet.